The communal bank Mujeres Activas (Energetic Women) is in its second loan cycle with the women's committee program. The members live in Ciudad del Este, a town in Minga Guazu, a growing area just outside the center. The area is hard to get to and growing slowly, which is one reason these women are striving to expand their businesses and provide a better environment for their community.

Ramona, one of the members, has a small stand where she sells empanadas. She hopes that, over time and with the help of other locals, she can improve her surroundings, make her family safer, and foresee a brighter future. She is applying for a loan to buy ingredients to make empanadas such as meat and vegetables so that she can keep working and helping her family.

Additional Information

More information about this loan

This loan is designed for poor clients living in rural areas with high levels of crime and social conflict. These clients, working primarily in agriculture, are often ineligible for credit from formal financial institutions because of the high-crime area they live in, their lack of adequate collateral (like a land title), and the likelihood of low agricultural production due to bad weather or pests. Fundación Paraguaya is committed to serving these clients with loans and other wraparound services tailored to their needs. It also provides clients working in agriculture with access to discounted training courses at a local agricultural school to teach them how to improve their crop yields.

About Fundación Paraguaya

Fundación Paraguaya is a financially self-sustaining social enterprise that promotes entrepreneurship in urban and rural areas through microfinance, education programs, and more. Its focus on agriculture has helped many farmers boost their crop yields. And a number of other borrowers have taken out loans to start and grow social businesses that have helped deliver eyeglasses, medicines and other helpful services in their local communities.

This is a Group Loan

In a group loan, each member of the group receives an individual loan but is part of a larger group of individuals. The group is there to provide support to the members and to provide a system of peer pressure, but groups may or may not be formally bound by a group guarantee. In cases where there is a group guarantee, members of the group are responsible for paying back the loans of their fellow group members in the case of delinquency or default.

Kiva's Field Partners typically feature one borrower from a group. The loan description, sector, and other attributes for a group loan profile are determined by the featured borrower's loan. The other members of the group are not required to use their loans for the same purpose.